[Insert pretentious name here]

Well, last year I became involved in a program called "Anglican Young People On-line", which is basically a group that hooks up young anglicans around the country through the internet. I have been invited to be on the "consulting team" for the design of a website for this program, but the problem is, it seems we have a need for a new name. Here is a bit of information on why the original name was chosen:

"At the first visioning meeting last year, Anglican Young People On-line was
suggested and adopted as a 'working title'. I liked that it didn't say
"youth" as a number of people who will be using this site (the 21 plus
crowd) may consider themselves 'young' but might not think of themselves as
'youth'. Also, it says it's an online resource - right in the title."

Now my question for you, is what should we call it now? If you have any ideas/suggestions I, on behalf of the 'consulting team' would be enormously grateful.

Last night while reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything" I realized just how puny and insignificant we, humans, really are compared to the universe. It really is quite a blow to man's ego to think, hey, maybe this is only one of countless universes, that eventually our universe will collapse in on itself and the whole "Big Bang" cycle will start again, erasing all memory that we ever existed. It is interesting just to sit back, and try to imagine the universe. Could you do it? No. You can't. :) The human mind is incapable of even imagining the vastness of our solar system. Did you know that all our little posters that go up in classrooms of our solar system aren't even close to scale? Did you know, that even if you shrink Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system, down to the size of the dot on this "i", and Pluto the size of a molecule, Pluto would still be 35 feet away were a picture drawn to scale? "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is an amazing book. I am hardly 50 pages into it, and already it has motivated me sufficiently to post ;) It is incredibly easy to read, gives lots of numbers, but in a very interesting way. Such as this: Did you know that there are something along the lines of 10 billion trillion planets in our universe? Now imagine this: If you were randomly inserted into our universe, the chances that you would land close to or on a planet is less that one in 10³³. (thats a 1 followed by 33 zeros, in case you aren't familiar with scientific notation)

So with that number specifically, I realized that:

1. We really are quite puny and insignificant, and that no matter how badly George Bush screws up today, there is always next universe.

and 2. "A Short History of Nearly Everything", by "Bill Bryson" is a really good book.

Last night I started in on a book by Deepak Chopra called "The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams". I must say, I'm a bit sceptical, but I'll wait until I finish the book to judge it :) Now on to the point of my post...Reading the book got me started thinking, what is success? Is it being successful in the business world? Is it making lots of money, having an awesome car and a million dollar house, having a hot wife, or is it being famous and admired? Or maybe for those less material, success is having deep and meaningful relationships with the ones you care about, or saving the world, I don't know. But I have the feeling that success is simply being happy. (I mean this kind of happiness) Which of course leads us back to the whole conversation on happiness, which I won't get into again ;) In that post, I kind of left it at the fact that I'm happy, I don't know why, or how, but I am and that's all that matters. Well, now it does matter! My curiosity has been aroused, and now I am on a quest to find out what makes me, and people in general, happy. (In case you didn't go to either of the links above, I am talking about happiness as "an attitude and a way of seeing the world rather than a warm, fuzzy feeling" as Rushan so aptly put it!)

And so the quest for the meaning and source of happiness and success begins! In the meantime, what do you consider success to be and what makes you happy, and if you are feeling adventurous, why?

I recently found a really cool site, Pandora. It is an interesting site where you type the name of a song or artist that you like, and for no charge, it will search it's seemingly very large database of songs for artists that are similar to the one you searched, or songs that are similar to one that you searched. It then creates a "radio" station that you can click on later to return to a previous search.

It is called: The Music Genome Project.

It really is quite neat. I searched "One Night in Bankok" by "Murray Head" and it is now feeding me songs based on "electronica influences, a subtle use of vocal harmonies, mild rythmic syncopation, minor key tonality, and prominent use of synth."

I also searched "Coldplay" and it gave me songs based on "basic rock song structures, mild rythmic syncopation, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, a vocal-centric aesthetic and a minor key tonality."

If you plan on joining and live in Canada, you may want to use a US postal code, because apparently it is illegal in Canada :P

EDIT: Apparently their library contains approximately 300,000 songs from over 10,000 artists. And it's not illegal in Canada, they just don't have anaudio streaming license for Canada.